Letters to David
Irving on this Website

Unless
correspondents ask us not to, this Website
will post selected letters that it
receives, and invite open
debate.

Aubrey
Soper,
has further and better (he says) information,
Monday, November 8, 2004, on the tragic loss of the
German liner Cap Arcona

The
German liner Cap Arcona in her
heyday.

Fact
and fiction on the May 3, 1945 sinking of "Cap
Arcona"

IT appears that there is much better information
about the Cap Arcona than what you had put
into page 64 of Nuremberg,
the Last Battle. In one to those odd
perversities of history, the Germans would likely
have looked much worse than the British if the
latter had not bombed the Cap Arcona.

This is from the squadron's
Operations Record Book:

"[Time up, 1515; time down,
1635] DD771. Shipping strikes in Lubeck Bay.
All the bombs were dropped on a motor vessel of
15-20,000 tons at 0.0208. The ship was already
burning as a result of attacks by 263 Squadron
and we scored two direct hits. Now left burning
in five places and later seen capsized and
burning, CAT.I."

[Source: Operations Record Book, AIR
27/1109, 5822, p. 1, Public Record Office,
London]

And from elsewhere:

"Antagonism between the crew and the 500 SS
guards on board is recorded, as is Kapitain
Bertram's petition to have his ship painted with
red crosses, or at least illuminated, so that it
might be recognised as a hospital ship. These
requests were denied.

"On 3 May Group Captain Johnny Baldwin was in
the cockpit of his Hawker Typhoon, leading 198
Squadron over a Neustadt Bay teeming with military
targets - among them the Cap Arcona. At 205m
long, the liner was easy to spot. The five aircraft
dived and fired their rockets before embarking on
strafing runs with their 20mm cannons. It was the
squadron's last action, and the pilots could never
have guessed at the carnage they were wreaking."
[source not given]